KARACHI, June 14: Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh, Senior vice-president of the Pakistan Muslim League and former Sindh population minister has underscored the need of involving communities and political leaders in the national population control programme.

Speaking at a seminar on "Emerging Population Challenges," at a local hotel on Monday, he said the country could not attain the set targets for population control lest the society owned the programme.

He said that population welfare department could never achieve the desired goals without an active collaboration between the public and private sectors, specially the NGOs, besides winning the support of elected representatives and Ulema, for the programme.

Mr Shaikh, referring to the 'Population Welfare Vision-2015' as an important document, said it was a road map for the future, which would help the department design its plans from national as well as global perspective.

He said that the population issue needed to be addressed directly, adding that previously the issue could not even be discussed in open, but now it had been taken on priority basis. He said that Sindh population welfare department officers had conducted a series of meetings with Islamic scholars and religious leaders on the issue.

He said that Ulema had agreed to debate on the subject on the basis of Quranic injunctions and Hadith, adding that soon a seminar would be held, which would be participated by Ulema, to seek their support for the population welfare programme.

He said a close coordination among various provincial departments was needed for making available the infrastructure and manpower at their disposal for efficient implementation of the programme and for reproductive health projects, from top to grassroots level.

He said the present government was committed to extend full political and administrative support to population welfare activities, adding that recently the department arranged a seminar, which was attended by over 50 members of the Sindh assembly.

The event was largely attended by representatives from provincial departments of Health, Education, Planning and Development, Local Government, Social Welfare and Women Development, besides members of different NGOs.

Others who spoke on the occasion included, Ms Donya Aziz, Federal Parliamentary Secretary on Population Welfare, Shakeel Durrani, Federal Secretary, Population Welfare, Mushtaq Ali Memon, Sindh population welfare secretary. -APP